RnB where the cable split how do you keep the wire round?

up with the gallery shot of both rewire and regrill





regarding the wire split, what do you mean how I keep it round?

if you just take the sleve and put it over the wire it will look like there are twisted wire underneth (wich there are) not round and smoth

o and what size techflex if you use techflex?

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this is where experience comes into play,If memory serves me correctly I used 1/2" 3-1 adhesive dual wall, layered 1" 3-1 gray shrink and 1.5" thick automotive type 2-1 ratio dual wall for the finish. the last shrink is super thick with a thick layer of adhesive underneath, no wire shape will show through it shrinks smooth.

I'm about to cut the centers out of the ear side of my Grados... wondering if it'll do good or bad things to the sound... any thoughts?(eg: cut out the center hole and middle ring of holes)

IMO, cutting out the center of the pads sounds better. It widens the sound stage a bit and makes them sound a bit clearer. Use a dime as a template and cut the foam out with a sharp x-acto knife or a scalpel. You can always glue the foam back in with crazy glue if you don't like the change.

I was thinking about doing this myself, but I am a complete noob at choosing what kind of wire and connectors to use. I have a good bit of experience with soldering and I've taken apart things that are much more complicated and fragile than a pair of headphones, so I'm ok with that part of this project. The three basic types of wire I've seen mentioned on this board are regular copper wire, silver coated copper, and pure silver. Would it be worth it to use the pure silver wire with the braiding that someone mentioned before or should I just get the regular copper or silver plated. I would like the cable to have a 1/4" plug on the end so I don't have to use a stupid adapter to work with my amp. Would it sound better to have a dedicated headphone amp? Right now I have a stereo yamah receiver that is about 25 years old connected to a M-Audio Sonica Theater which is connected to my PowerBook. All of my music in iTunes is encoded in a lossless codec. I was thinking about getting the grado amp but it's expensive and I don't even know if it would sound any better. I don't know about building my own amp. That seems like it would be too hard for me. I won't be back until thursday or friday, so I'll check back then.

Though the star-quad has low inductance, its capacitance is not too great. It's true we are not talking about interconnects here, where capacitance really matters (whereas for speaker cables usually inductance becomes the concern), but I still think one should look at other geometries. Has anyone measured the performance of coaxial cables for connecting headphones?

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Coax is single cored, so you'd need two separate cables right from the connector, as opposed to the more elegant split at the "neck band", as it were. True, coax will have a lower capacitance for a given length, but using a headphone amp which is isolated from this capacitance makes the few pF added by the cable all but irrelevant. You'd be very hard pushed to measure or hear a difference in the audio range.

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Do any of you braid your own wire? I like to use silver plated/coated copper teflon insulated mil-spec wire and do a 3 wire braid (one positive, two negative) per channel. if you use smaller gauge 22+ it doesn't end up that large. Kimber Kable calles it "Tri-braid field geometry" or something ridiculous. I believe it is the same braiding you saw girls doing when you were in the 1st grade! It does seem to resist noise and EFI well. I might have to try the Star Quads. I do have a 1/4" stereo extension cable I got from my brother for Christmas, which is made from Belden Star Quad. Sounds good enough, and having all 4 leads in such a compact wire is useful.

from my experience Canare star quad is a poor sonic performer for headphone recable. It also incurs flexibilty issues.

Canare Star quad is an excellent wire for analog RCA interconnects.

IMO magnet wire is not as good as starquad, and silver wire is very sibilant and thin.

also not all silver plated wire sounds the same, Ive heard some poor performing silver plated conductors,

braided mill spec wire so far has yeilded excellent results, while not shielded as good as the silver plated wire with tinned shield wrapped in teflon/or fiber glass impregnated wire. but the teflon tape wire is a poorer performer sonically compared to braided mil spec wire.

teflon tape wire was the first wire I used, I stopped using it because the sonic performance of them wire was poor and somewhat dirty sounding, some of them are impregnated with fiber glass in the teflon tape which is why I choose not to work with that wire. People use it because its easy and requires no braiding, and has a built in shield. Sonically it is inferior IMO.

Gold alloy wire had the best sound to my ears. Though it costs more then 4n-5n wire pure silver wire! Some may argue with conductive properties of gold alloy, but my multimeter states its not an issue and yielded very low resistance if any.

These are the conductors I have used.

Wire
silver plated mil spec
silver plated teflon tape shield wire
Canare star quad
Canare instrument cable
Canare 75 digital coax
Canare 4s11
Generic 10 awg speaker wire
Monster 12 awg speaker wire
AR 16 awg speaker wire
Monter 16 awg speaker wire
5n pure silver wire
21 awg magnet wire
Cardas HPI
Cardas 24 x 4 shielded headphone cable wire
Gold alloy wire
Gepko instrument cable
Kapton insulated silver plated shielded wire

those are the only ones I can name off the top of my head
The only conductor left I have not tried is conductive carbon

Connectors
Neutrik 1/8" trs
Neutrik 1/8" gold plated trs
Neutril silver plated nickel body 1/4" trs
Neutrik Black barrel silver plated 1/4" trs
Dayton Gold plated 1/4" trs
Canare 1/4" ts
Switchcraft 1/8" trs
Switchcraft 1/8" RA
Canare f-9 slim body rca
Neutrik nickel RCA
Imported Gold locking rca
Lok silver locking rca
Chrome gold imported rca
Neutrik Gold XLR
Neutrik Silver XLR
Imported Gold barrel XLR
Neutrik weather resistant premium XLR
Netrik black barrel RCA
Switchcraft 1/4" TS
Switchcraft 1/4" RA TS
Switchcraft 1/4" female TRS
Calrad 1/8" female TRS
Wattgate and Marinco green dot Power connectors
Cardas slvr RCA
Cardas rhodium 1/4" TRS
Cardas rhodium 1/4" TS

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you are right about the flexibility, the Belden Starquad wire I have is very strange, kinda wants to kink itself.....annoying to say the least.

do you like those Switchcraft connectors more than Neutrik's? I like the Neutrik "3.5mm L's(bigger cable entry)" from partsexpress, but those Switchcrafts look like they give you more room inside to work with. I need to change the wires on my SR-80's, i hate how they will never go staight from the earpiece to the "Y". really annoying.

Are Belden and Canare related, how can they both sell a product with the same name? I did notice though that my Belden Starquad wire is much thinner than this Canare Starquad wire posted.

Has anyone ever tried to open up some Koss portaPro's to recable them? I dont know if it is possible (without 'breaking' them that is), since the housing is so small and glued shut so to speak.

Star quad is a cable style, not a brand. It is a 4 wire cable that is good at rejecting RF because of it's geometry. Canare, mogami, and belden all make star quad, in thin and thick styles...

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Well that clears things up. Thanks.

From the looks of it, it is pretty much a twisted set of 4 wires, with an metallic shield around all them correct? The 4 wires inside are not braided right?